Kiveton Park: An Abandonment Wonderland in South Yorkshire
Ruins central: detail from an 1892 Ordnance Survey map showing the Dog Kennels area of Kiveton Park. Via Old Maps Online.
One dreich afternoon a few weeks ago, as is my wont, I hopped on the X5 and headed to Kiveton Park, a small and unassuming ex-mining town in South Yorkshire in striking distance of both Sheffield and Rotherham. My trip was predicated on photographing the former crushing and washing plant of the Park Recycling Centre (which closed amid legal turmoil in 2018), which I spotted on the Facebook page of the inimitable Lost Places & Forgotten Faces, and which resides in a former industrial and quarrying area by the train station historically known as Dog Kennels. I was immediately drawn to it because of its striking turquoise hue, which – like most vibrant and colourful subjects – I thought would work especially well in the flat light of an overcast day. Some risque graffiti by prolific local artist Trench added considerably to its charm; I’ll never tire of taking pictures of graffiti, and – for me at least – its presence adds considerably to the visual interest and appeal of an abandoned site.
However, as is so often the way, it turned out there were many more riches to be discovered, in particular no fewer than two car graveyards in close proximity to the ex-recycling plant. I’m an absolute sucker for abandoned vehicles; something about their intimate, human scale and the pareidolic qualities of their fronts makes them especially compelling, and the sight of grills, headlights, and steering wheels poking through the undergrowth is almost uniquely discordant and melancholy.
The first graveyard is in a small woodland just to the south of the station, and clusters in and around a group of outhouses once known as Station Row (themselves now dilapidated). It consists of multiple vehicles densely wreathed in ivy; my hugely uneducated guess is that they date from the 1940s to the 1970s, with many having rotted down to their frames and now melting entirely into their surroundings. Trench has been active here as well, depositing a wonderfully eerie doll’s face inside the forsaken property.
The second graveyard is a short distance away up Abbey Lane, and, in a splendidly creepy and appropriate touch, is in the grounds of a former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, constructed in 1893 and abandoned in the 1990s, when it was apparently purchased by a car enthusiast called ‘Mr Holmes’ who used it for storage. The vehicles here (which include a 1960s Mark I Ford Cortina estate, several Morris Oxfords, and assorted farm and industrial equipment) also date from the mid twentieth century and are in much better condition, although frustratingly the lost church is now so tightly hemmed in by trees and foliage I couldn’t go wide enough on the scene with my shortest focal length (20mm) to properly capture it within the frame.
An abandoned working man’s club on Kiveton Park’s main drag, shuttered since 2012, nicely rounded out the afternoon’s exploring and left a suitably bleak last impression.
Kiveton Park Proprietary Club, Kiveton Park, South Yorkshire.
